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The Wiphala: Bolivia’s Other National Flag

Of all of the world’s national flags, few if any can be considered as distinctive as the Qulla Suyu wiphala. Since 5 August 2009, this particular wiphala is required to be flown on all public and private buildings jointly with the more familiar red-yellow-green Bolivian national tricolour. This makes Bolivia the only sovereign country with two distinct national flags of theoretically equal status. But what is a wiphala, what does its design represent, and why is this flag so politically charged?

The wiphala emerged during the days of the Inca Empire (perhaps as early as 2 000 years ago), where it was as a royal standard or processional emblem. The seven colours on the banner are representations of the colours of the rainbow, a theme that occurs repeatedly across various fields of Quechua-Aymara art and design. Arranged diagonally, these also produce the unique patterning on the wiphala: each colour is in a square within a row or column, producing a 7×7 grid where each row and column is made of the seven distinct colours. There were four different wiphala arrangements used during the Inca Empire (Quechua: Tawantinsuyu) times, one arrangement for each of the four Incan provinces (suyu) represented in the flag. The colour of the longest diagonal line specifies which region a particular wiphala represents:

White:Qullasuyu (the southeastern province, representing the Aymara territories of Peru, Bolivia, and northern parts of Chile and Argentina; this is the version that has become standardised in Bolivia)

Green: Andean economy and production, natural resources and the environment

Blue: Space and the supernatural

Violet: Andean government and self-determination

In Bolivia, the Qulla Suyu wiphala became the standard used in the movement that culminated in the election of Evo Morales, an Aymara, as Bolivian president in 2005, who went on to elevate that version of the wiphala to a national symbol recognised in law (similar to the renaming of the country as the ‘Plurinational State of Bolivia’ in an effort to recognise the dozens of various indigenous ethnic groups in the country, and the designation of 34 different official languages). This is a rather interesting move in a country where Aymara are not even the largest indigenous group (Quechua make up 30% of the population; Aymara 25%, mestizo 30% and white 15%). That said, as mentioned above, indigenous movements across the Andes had adopted the wiphala concept years before as an emblem of solidarity; any objection to the elevation of the wiphala as a national symbol of Bolivia tends to come from the eastern, wealthier, Spanish-dominated side of the country (specifically the department of Santa Cruz).